How I Love To Give In
by vernajast
Summary: While living with Orochimaru, Sasuke starts seeing a familiar blond invading his dreams. The dreams start to take on a life of their own, bleeding into reality. A very broken story of Sasuke and Naruto, and their world falling apart, being rebuilt.


_**Warnings: **death, violence, situations of dubious consent, more violence, more death, stark imagery, a happy ending_

* * *

**"(How I Love To) Give In"  
by vernajast  
**

**the story of two boys, the dream they shared,  
and how everything went wrong along the way**

_**(a strange story of symbolism, as dreams often are)**_

/ / / / / / / / / / / / /

_For your every broken dream, I have two._

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_The hand on his shoulder isn't entirely unexpected, though it has never happened this way in reality. Not that his dreams can be labeled exactly accurate: his parents alive, his brother sleeping in the room beside his, the curse seal gone. So what is the addition of a certain infuriating blond?_

_Sasuke isn't sure how he feels about Naruto's image invading this particular dream._

_The rogue Uchiha sits on the dock near his family's home, feet dangling, bare and kicking at the water. This is his special spot, the place he finally earned his clan name, and he comes here in his dreams to clear his head and think._

_And now Naruto is plopped down on the boards beside him, slowly removing his own shoes and rolling up his pants._

_Sasuke turns halfway toward his former teammate, arching a dark, thin brow. Their mutual understanding extends to body language, and Naruto immediately pipes up with a "What the hell does it look like I'm doing?" and "It's a hot day, teme, so move over!" The last is followed by the blond's shoulder shoving against Sasuke's, wedging himself onto the ledge._

_'Too damned close.' Still, Sasuke allows it, doesn't walk away as he would in reality. Because, again, this isn't real, and he is far too used to the discrepancies._

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

"Why are you here?" The rustling of sheets. He was still in bed; they shouldn't be here.

Kabuto's smile was worse for its sincerity. "You know why we're here, Sasuke-kun."

Dark eyes moved from one to the other before resignedly dropping to the floor. "Make it quick." He pulled the blankets back and stared up at the ceiling, the cracks he could always count on to be there. Mechanically, he added, "I need to train and can't be bothered with a limp."

The hiss of Orochimaru's voice stabbed between his eyes and he knew they were _doing_ something to his mind. Always. "Of course, Sasuke-kun. This won't hurt a bit."

He hated the little gasp that escaped his lips, and then it was only pain and blessed blackness.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_Another night and he's dreaming and it's _the same dream_. Same dock, same lake. The sky is dark, moonless, and even in the dream he can feel Orochimaru's sour breath on his neck._

_'No, it's the breeze,' he's sure. The hand he's come to expect drops roughly onto his shoulder minutes later and, despite the way he jumps, Sasuke is glad for the company. They laugh while they talk-both of them-and he gets the distinct impression this is what it could have been like, if he had stayed._

_The swaying branches of a silk tree catch his eye. The flowers are magenta and pink and remind him of so many sakura petals when a strong gust of autumn wind blows a few more into the air, to the ground and the surface of the water._

_Though it's disturbed, the lake reflects their faces perfectly. The moon that isn't there._

_How old are they? How long has it been? Questions he hasn't asked in years mingle with the scent of dirt and silk tree perfume and the doppelganger beside him, and a number-'nineteen'-comes to mind, but is gone with the next gust of wind._

_"-so you should come home now, you know?" Sincere blue eyes seem to scrutinize each movement of Sasuke's body, each breath that passes through his lungs. It's so fucking _real_ that he feels himself nod and hope briefly fills the space between them, radiating off of tan skin and agitated blond locks._

_It is immediately replaced by cold distance and scorn and a hastily muttered, "there's no way you mean that," and, "stop screwing with me," and a much quieter, softer, "I hate you," to which Sasuke clings._

_Every night is the same for weeks. The petals, the wind, the question. Sometimes the sun is shining. Moonless nights follow only after losing consciousness under a pale, serpentine body._

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

Orochimaru had always found a certain amount of amusement in watching his pet and Minato's stunted offspring. Years between encounters never seemed to dull the thrill.

When Konoha retreated, he reached for Sasuke's arm.

"I'm too tired."

"Oh?"

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_The chipped and peeling wood of the dock is reassuring under Sasuke's fingers; he hasn't seen Naruto for weeks. The texture has replaced the gentle touches of another hand, rough and slightly irritating._

_He's missed the _thunk thunk_ of Naruto's feet on the boards and smiles when, finally, a tan, callused hand rests silently on his shoulder. Together they are a mute parody of the first time._

_Sasuke wishes _this_ were reality, that the dream-the nightmare-would fall away and this moment would remain. But it's not and it won't and Naruto is in no way this relaxed man sitting on a dock with his friend. The blond hunter-nin is a force of nature and only recently has Sasuke come to appreciate his unyielding fortitude. "Why?"_

_"Because I'm tired, Sasuke. I can't keep chasing you like I'm some kid or...or like I'm in love with you or something stupid like that."_

_'Stupid like that.' Sasuke has won; he has managed to break the unbreakable._

_There had been a rumor-'Naruto is giving up.'-but this confirmation is surreal and a hollow tremble forms at his gut. All at once, he's screaming, "Fucking liar!" and shoving Naruto and his cold, cold blue eyes hard into the water. In another life, it might have been humorous, but the rift between them is far too real, and the impostor, too much like the man, himself._

_It hurts to be abandoned again._

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

Sasuke stirred and Orochimaru stroked a finger through thick, greasy black hair. They were drawing close to something; he could feel it in the sticky-sweet air of spring becoming summer in Rice Paddy Country.

For how long would they be secure in Oto?

Thin lips twisted into what passed for a smile amongst the ranks of Sound, and the pale Sannin let his plans congeal on their own-drifting, fanciful thoughts in the afterglow.

His pet Uchiha continued to rest in his arms.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_It is the first time in two years he doesn't dream of the dock. There is a strange noise here in the dark, in this cave. Someone is crying._

_He finds him huddled against the farthest wall, a stubby, dim lamp on the ground nearby. It blinds Sasuke momentarily, but as his eyes adjust, he makes out a face smudged with dirt and tears and three whisker-like scars on each cheek._

_The blond man isn't ashamed of his tears or his pain. If Sasuke could cry, he wonders, would he be moved to do so. He suspects he might._

_Instead, his arms wrap protectively around the hunched form, pulling Naruto against his own chest, embracing his enemy, his friend. Their fluid bodies have always conversed by purely physical means, yet this melting of two into one is something else entirely. It can hardly be called love making; it is nothing less than battle._

_The lingering promise of _more_ is understood between gasping breaths, but they are both accustomed to the disappointment of a broken promise._

_Sasuke can feel himself awakening, the dream fading, and, urgently, Naruto gives a quiet confession: "They've made me Hokage. Hn. My d-dream's come true, huh?"_

_'Of course.'_

Sasuke didn't have to imagine what had happened. He had been present, standing beside Orochimaru, hand clasped around his long-dead cousin's lone sharingan plucked from the socket of his former sensei's skull. 'A gift for you, Sasuke-kun.' And Kakashi had screamed and thrashed about, tearing the skin at his wrists where the bonds were sharpened for just that purpose. A dead, gray eye could have focused softly on his stoic student and cracked lips might have formed syllables, might have tried to speak. Sasuke hadn't been bothered to make out whatever word the man had chosen as his last.

He had placed the sharingan on a high shelf in his cell and immediately tried to forget. But it followed his movements as he paced from one end of the small chamber to the other, and finally found its end, popped and stretched and burned until the evidence was all but destroyed. Sasuke would remember, but that was all; a dark spot amongst darker memory.

That woman had followed days later-the other remaining Sannin-and Orochimaru went out to meet her as equals with a sly, "Watch and learn, Sasuke-kun." And then there were no Sannin at all.

_Sasuke's pale hand twitches against the bare skin of Naruto's shoulder._

_In flat, strangled monotone, he relates these things to the blond. It is a dream; there are no consequences in dreams._

_He questions, then, why he flinches when Naruto pulls away as if burned and vomits against the corner of the cave. Is it his punishment? No, punishment is what follows after, when the blond man yells, "I hate you...love you...why can't you just get out of my dreams!" Beating his fist against Sasuke's face, he screams, "I just want the real Sasuke to come home!"_

_The struggle to breathe is hard won against the flow of dreamblood down the back of his throat. The Uchiha wishes he knew where to find this "real Sasuke."_

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

He opened the small box Kabuto had given him, staring down at three tiny red pills.

'One at a time, Sasuke-kun; what would we do if something happened to you?'

Orochimaru was gone-'dead, he's so fucking dead'-and Kabuto had hidden away in self-imposed isolation. Mourning.

Sasuke fingered the little red globes and felt a thrill that could have resembled hope in a better man...maybe something _would_ happen.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_They lie haphazardly sprawled on their backs amidst weeds and undergrowth, fertile soil left fallow, dry grasses waving in the soft, warm wind. Clouds drift overhead, reminding them of him._

_In silence, Naruto takes Sasuke's hand. He does not squeeze it gently or rub patterns into the palm, but he's holding it, which is perhaps more than his former teammate deserves._

_The wind carries with it stiff brown leaves and the scent of dead fish and plants, detritus from a suddenly dry riverbed in which the small creatures still flop and gasp for breath. It passes by just..._there_...and by its presence, Sasuke knows the world is changing. The dream, reality. It hardly matters which, anymore._

_He turns to look at the blond only to have his attention caught by first one, then dozens, then hundreds of black birds, flocking over the horizon, crossing the sky like a rip in the seams of their dreamworld, and then vanishing. His sharingan picks out one thousand and his traitorous body shudders involuntarily. "What...was that?"_

_Naruto studies his face, his beautiful porcelain face, and then his eyes drift back to where the birds had been moments before, and he whispers, smiling sadly, "War."_

_And the smile, so out of place, makes more sense than it should. Sasuke starts to ask if Naruto feels at all guilty using the dual nature of the place to hold him here, but Naruto cuts him off: "Why did you kill him? You could have come back. Now...I can't let you return to the village, Sasuke. I can't let that go. Shikamaru was our _friend_!"_

_Sasuke frowns at his own madness reflected in Naruto's too blue eyes. Then, the young leader of Sound is forcefully reminded that he holds no such allegiance to anyone from Leaf, least of all its Hokage, when he is awakened by the swirling cacophony of invasion. _

The dark, scratched window reveals a blond man at the front of the oncoming nin, and Sasuke smiles, as well. "War."

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

He is sleeping more often and Sasuke can't say that he minds. Dreaming while awake, asleep...everything presses in and he dreams again to escape, ignoring the voices of his many ghosts, who mumble and whisper that the former leader of Sound has lost his will. The truth isn't far off.

_They are in the field again, whereas last time, it was the cave, and the time before, on a mountainside that might have overlooked Konoha._

_The newest addition, a tall, slender cherry tree, stands alone amidst the grass. Its withered pink petals dangle from dead branches, shivering with each thrust of Sasuke's hips. He fucks Naruto into the trunk and the sky is bloody and stark framing their profiles. _

In reality, he knows his body is well hidden, crouched and asleep behind a large boulder. Naruto's is nearby-'not near enough'-though he couldn't locate the exact position before drifting from one reality to another.

It is now a seamless transition, and Sasuke is in control.

_Naruto cums, arched back, forehead pressed into the bark of the tree, his cry sad and triumphant and broken at once, and Sasuke's answering release is immediate, trembling and quiet and ground shaking. Their well-practiced _collapse, tug, wrap, hold_ has become a vital pattern, overshadowed only by the larger _hide, sleep, attack, run_._

_The blond pulls a dark head down to his chest, muttering soft 'iloveyous' and closing his eyes_.

Both awaken alone, each with that now familiar, sudden, and thoroughly conditioned rush of adrenaline. Leaf and Sound are no more, reduced to two desperate men who neither truly live nor die. They understand what they should have known all along: they have always shared the same dream.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_Amidst wind and mist and another bloody sky, Sasuke confesses. He has been drugging his body, forcing sleep._

_'To see you.' The words die on his lips when Naruto's eyes confirm the betrayal, but Sasuke sighs. That look is all too familiar, particularly _here_ and with _him.

_A muttered, "No wonder I've been sleeping so damn much," and Naruto continues walking. His fist is clenching at his side, mirroring Sasuke's, sharing memories as they share their bodies._

...a fourth chidori bloomed from Sasuke's palm, a swirling blue rasengan was birthed in kind, and then the suddenly too quiet rush of mated jutsu meeting halfway...the thickness of blood in their ears...the scent of singed hair and sulphur, ozone...the coma, the headaches, the dizziness...the first dreams of shadowy existence...

_Steps stuttering, halting, the Uchiha whispers and knows beyond doubt that the kyuubi can hear (it can hear his breathing from five hundred paces when they're awake; it can sure as hell hear him now), "Come to me, in the other-"_

_"It's too late." The three steps Naruto takes toward his enemy-friend are telling. "I'm close now, Sasuke. So close the fox can smell your blood and...I'll kill you soon."_

_Six more steps. Naruto's face pressed to his neck, feral grin against skin. "Teme."_

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_They curl together in the grass that is still dead despite another bright spring in _the other place_ they never discuss-except now they do, they have to._

_Sasuke leans down over Naruto, bodies flushed and naked, sweat pooled between them, and he drags out the harsh syllables one at a time, his breath hot on tan skin, "Come to me. Or I will drag this body under and we'll both be trapped."_

_Naruto's lips purse and quirk, though there is no warmth in the expression. He can't lie and say he wouldn't like to remain in this world._

_Instead of answering, he bites down into Sasuke's neck. He watches clouds pass by over a pale shoulder and shudders when his lover's lips finally relinquish a suppressed moan. It is a weakness; Sasuke has made himself weak for Naruto's sake, and the blond can't stand it._

_He can't resist it._

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_The world around them is falling into ruin. There are cracks in places where no crack should be: the sakura tree, the wind, the noises of cicada...even the birds are brittle ruins crashing to the surface, splashing as large pools of crimson in the dry, gray grass, which only soaks up the color to match the sky. _

Naruto sleeps when Sasuke sleeps, though the kyuubi maintains Naruto's body and brings him to consciousness and food and pumps chakra into his legs for sporadic hasty spurts of travel toward the source of everything. Toward Sasuke, who has hidden better than usual.

_The dream is breaking apart. Sasuke is breaking apart._

_On the days when Naruto is gone-_when he is awake while Sasuke remains dormant_-it rains and rains, and is so empty it hurts, and the proud Uchiha has finally remembered how to cry, blaming the wetness of his cheeks on the large drops that fall from a jaded sky._

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

'Let us kill him. Let us...destroy the Uchiha...'

"N-no...fox...shut...shhh...sleeping..." Sasuke looked peaceful when he slept; Naruto hadn't known.

The blond man tripped around the cave in which Sasuke had obviously lived for weeks. He was fighting his own fatigue, his urge to sleep anytime the Uchiha closed his eyes. Only his symbiant demon kept him conscious and he scowled at his reliance on the arrogant bijuu. "We won't kill...him..."

Naruto replaced Sasuke's wards with stronger, older ones and kicked away the empty pill containers and syringes. 'For how long has he been...' He fell to his knees beside his beautiful friend and stroked a gaunt, pale cheek before curling around him protectively.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

_Running, running, running-the open field, past the sakura tree, down to the end of the dock and atop the water to the fledgling village that was never there before._

_Sasuke isn't here. In their former reality, his skin is dry and gray and so very lifeless. His hands still grasp a small, empty box between thin, skeletal fingers._

_'But that means...stupid _BASTARD_...fuck! Wake me the hell up, demon!'_

_It is just an empty dream, and Naruto does not wake up. Cannot. "Too many drugs, maybe a sleeping jutsu...dammit, teme-" He falls silent, finds the final words unwilling: '-you left me, again!'_

_He does not admit that he had expected it; Sasuke was always meant to let him down. To remind him that optimism and confidence are nothing in the face of reality._

_"Reality...? What _are_ the rules in a dream?"_

_Days, weeks, hours pass. From atop the newly sculpted Hokage monument, a solitary figure stands alone, looking down on his creation._

_"Hey, teme, I can see your house from here. Oh, there's Iruka-sensei and Sakura-chan!" His wave is returned in kind, and he leans back on the balls of his feet, fingering small swirls of uzumaki and sharingan in the dirt. "Do you wanna get ramen? I made Ichiraku's yesterday."_

_For all that he had hoped to be appointed Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, Uzumaki Naruto has never aspired to become a god. Until the need arose._

_"No, you're right; it's time I really got to work. Saved the best for last."_

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

There were _(are)_ far too many explanations as to how and why they continued to exist. It was _(is)_ as if the dream had superseded reality...become...reality.

The blond allowed such thoughts to go on, unabated, until a thin, pale hand came to rest lightly on his shoulder. Sasuke kicked his shoes off and slid _(slides)_ down smoothly to sit on the dock. His feet dangled in the water.

The sun was setting, the sky run through with oranges and reds, violent beauty that added a false blush to the Uchiha's cheek. He caught Naruto watching and scowled, elbowing him sharply in the ribs, looking away in annoyance when his friend only grinned wider.

Finally, with a much suffering sigh, Sasuke slipped _(slips)_ his hand into Naruto's and said nothing.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / /

_For your every broken dream, I have two. And yet the only dream that mattered is the one we shared._

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \


End file.
